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Forum:Dangerous ads on Memory Alpha
In the past couple of weeks I have noticed a worrying trend while browsing Memory Alpha on mobile or tablet. Adverts redirect away from the page, most notably the notorious "Download this app or your sim card will be corrupted" rubbish that has been floating around for many years. These adverts are not in themselves dangerous, but cause a huge inconvenience and also causes problems if something even more questionable gets into the advertising system in future under the same exploit. From what I have seen in the past, these are questionable advertisers who pretend your phone/tablet is infected with a virus to get you to download an app which may or may not be dangerous in itself. It exploits a flaw in certain browsers (most notably Chrome, some others have taken active steps to block them) to try and scare people into downloading potentially dangerous apps, the only reason these ads exist is because a website does not monitor who is advertising through them. I don't know if this is an issue to be handled here, or on wikia itself, but I have only experienced it here which is highly concerning. I also don't know if I am reporting this issue in the right place. All the same I would advise everyone to be cautious with this as this could be highly dangerous. Ashrod (talk) 13:44, August 31, 2016 (UTC) :Hey, Sulfur sent me this link. Long story short: you're right, that's a bad ad. Best guess is that it's an ad being sent to us through a third party ad network (meaning it's not something that a client directly sold to us). Next time you see it, can you report it ? That way we can get the details of the ad, and if you can send a screenshot too that'd be really helpful. With that info we can chase the ad down and remove it from our network. Thanks for posting this thread about it. - [[User:Brandon Rhea|'Brandon Rhea']](talk) 21:12, August 31, 2016 (UTC) I've also been getting these ads in December. It is now to the point where the ad went full screen and no way to back out of it through the browser. I ended up disabling my Chrome browser. Why hasn't this issue been solved yet? Do you realize that since Memory Alpha is and Wikia are ad-supported, it is in fact your responsibility to monitor your ad networks. Do not use the third party excuse. -- 21:56, December 19, 2017 (UTC) To amend my previous comment: December 2017, more than a year after Ashrod reported the malicious ad (August 2016). This is a major reason I use adblockers and do not whitelist sites. -- 22:56, December 19, 2017 (UTC) ::Again, report it here: . There is nothing that we (as admins of this site) can do. Wikia can (and should be dealing with it), but you need to let them know what the problem ads are. Screenshot them. Report them. ::Report all of them if you need. -- sulfur (talk) 01:14, December 20, 2017 (UTC)